The Allahabad High Court has turned down a legal plea contesting the territorial boundaries of assembly segments in Uttar Pradesh’s Ambedkar Nagar district and the reservation of the Alapur seat for Scheduled Castes, ruling that the nearly two-decade-old exercise cannot be revisited.
A division bench comprising Justice Shekhar B Saraf and Justice Abdhesh Kumar Chaudhary held that the challenge was brought forward with severe delay and produced no evidence of constitutional infractions. The court noted that the delimitation notification, issued on December 5, 2006, carries statutory force and cannot be struck down simply because an individual relies on personal demographic estimates to dispute the outcome.
Grounds of Constitutional Challenge
The writ petition had been moved by Dileep Kumar, a local voter from Ambedkar Nagar, who sought a fresh revision of both the district’s constituency boundaries and their reservation classifications.
Kumar argued that the 2006 exercise breached Article 170(2) of the Constitution by creating severe demographic disparity across the district’s five assembly seats: Katehari, Tanda, Alapur, Jalalpur, and Akbarpur. In his plea, Kumar pointed out that Jalalpur’s population stood at 4,60,245 compared to Akbarpur’s 3,68,722. He also claimed that the redrawn territorial boundaries improperly influenced the reservation of Alapur, asserting that its Scheduled Caste demographic proportion failed to warrant its designated reserved status.
Limits of Judicial Intervention
Dismissing these contentions, the bench clarified that Article 170(2) mandates population-to-seat parity only to the extent practicable. This standard grants the Delimitation Commission necessary discretion to account for administrative borders, geographic continuity, and related local considerations. The judges highlighted that internal benchmarks allowing up to a 10 per cent variation from average population figures are administrative guidelines rather than rigid, legally enforceable rights.
The bench reaffirmed that courts operate under strictly confined parameters when reviewing delimitation notifications, intervening only on limited grounds such as constitutional breaches, fundamental rights violations, or absence of legislative competence. The judges ruled that the petitioner had established none of these exceptions.
Impact on Past Elections and Upcoming Census
The high court also underlined the timing of the petition, noting that multiple assembly polls have taken place under the existing arrangement over the past twenty years. Disturbance to this framework at such a late juncture would be inequitable, the judges said.
The bench concluded by pointing out that the 2026 census process is advancing toward completion, after which a comprehensive nationwide delimitation exercise may follow.
